


SOL 2.0

by gala_apples



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance
Genre: M/M, Nostalgia, Walk Of Shame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-25
Updated: 2012-10-25
Packaged: 2017-11-17 00:27:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/545500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not exactly the Summer of Like, but it's something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	SOL 2.0

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [this picture](http://mikeyway-daily.livejournal.com/312793.html).

It's not like everyone doesn't know. When you don't show up on the bus it's not hard to deduce you're on someone else's bus. That or you're at a gas station, Ray helpfully points out. It's been at least eight years since that happened, and it still comes up a few times a month. It's got absolutely no weight for emotional blackmail any longer, but it still comes up. Apparently Ray's never gonna get over it.

But he's never at a gas station. Hell, ninety percent of the time he doesn't even leave the bus at gas station stops. Frank's always more than willing to get him a special mix of sweet, salty, and stale as hell if he forks over ten bucks. Every night he disappears, and every night it's the same place.

It's weird, how each morning feels like university all over again. Or at least how movies have taught him mornings at university are supposed to feel. The facts are when he was at college he never had to do a crack of dawn sneak out to avoid awkward conversation. At Rutgers he only slept with girls. It's practically a law that the girl is the one leaving in the morning, possibly to the jeers of the other guys in the hall. It took Jepha blowing him to open him to the possibilities.

This though, is definitely the experience he missed out on in university. It’s a four step process, and each are crucial to make it home alive.

First things first, he has to climb out of the bed of last night’s fun without waking the person. With Pete it’s harder than it sounds. He knew half a decade ago that Pete doesn’t sleep well, habits neatly matching his own. Except Mikey’s stable now, for the most part, and he’s not sure if Pete ever can be. Thirty two, and he still sleeps sixteen hours some days, nothing for days in a row, and has the ability to jolt awake in moments. It’ll come in handy in a few years when Bronx hovers at the bedroom door with nightmares. For now it’s only a problem. Still he manages to do it, he even gets the curtain closed again without dragging the fabric over the knuckles of Pete’s outstretched hand.

Naked and shivering in the cranked up air conditioning of the Black Cards bus -they leave theirs lower so Frank doesn’t get sick- it’s time for step two. Step two is locating his clothes. The reason for the search is a bit different than it would have been during university. His jeans and sleeveless shirt weren’t tossed in a drunken passion last night, nor were Pete’s. That they’re missing is entirely Pete’s band’s fault. Any clothes that drop into the tiny passway will be thrown into corners at random by Nate, for his own safety. The guy could trip on _air_.

Mikey finds them semi-folded on the couch, like someone went to the trouble to actually fold them then later sat on the couch without looking and heat-pressed butt wrinkles into them. He shakes them out as best as he can -as long as he can keep up the enthusiasm required to, which isn’t long- and pulls them on, steadfastly ignoring Bebe’s look. Over the course of the summer she’s surely experienced worse. And it’s not like he’s on the internet, unlike some people he could mention. After all she’s heard -and probably smelled- she deserves a full frontal if she really wants it. 

Step three is figuring out present location compared to where you’d be if you didn’t have impaired judgement the night before. In this case that means he has to leave the Black Cards bus, and search for the MCR bus. It almost makes Mikey miss the van days. He might have slept half on Otter, half on merch boxes, but at least then they had a trailer with shit written and drawn all over it that couldn’t be confused with others. What they really need is a super obnoxious custom painted tour bus, like the Spice Girls had in that shitty movie. Double decker British flag bus with full length mirrors and bean bag couches and swings inside, Mikey could totally go for that.

He’s two steps out of the bus when he turns and keys in the code that will let him back in. He’s not entirely sure what state he’s in, but it’s ridiculously sunny. Even walking straight to his bus he couldn’t handle that sans coffee, and it won’t be a straight walk this morning. There are only five buses in this area, they must be split up between parking lots. He’ll have to search for his, and he can’t do that without sunglasses.

Luckily there are a pair on the kitchen counter. He’s not sure who they belong to, sunglasses tends to be rather unisex, but he can’t see any of them begrudging him them. It’s not like he won’t bring them back later. Mikey unfolds the arms and slides them over his ears, and heads back towards the door.

"Those are not big enough to cover your face," Bebe informs him as he passes her. He's not sure how she can already be dressed and made up when it’s so early. The only reason Mikey's awake is because he has to be. The later he does this, the more potential witnesses.

“Yeah,” he says. Or maybe it’s a grunt. He has to wait until he gets to his bus to drink coffee. If he’s in the lounge without coffee his band will. Well. He just needs to not tap out his coffee requirements. If that hampers his conversational skills Bebe will have to deal.

“They’re not even ridiculous enough to distract from who’s under them. I don’t think we’ve got anything either. Pete knows the Jo Bros, he doesn’t know Elton.”

“Yeah.”

“Go back to bed Mikey.”

“Can’t.” That much should be obvious, even to a relative noob on the scene.

“I meant your bed. Talk to you tonight.”

“Yeah.” Because that’s true too. Barring some disaster, Mikey’s going to be back on the bus tonight, and the night after, until the end of the tour. Until he’s back with Alicia and he’s back with Bronx, and neither ask questions about the summer, for different reasons.

The quest for a toothbrush and specialty cereal and possibly even a change of clothes takes longer than it should for a veteran of this kind of thing, and shorter than some of his more memorable experiences. He keeps his eyes glued to the ground as he walks, he can recognise their bus by tire. The last thing Mikey needs right now is to go head over heels and split his skin tight jeans. His brother’s got a checkered history of underwear shots, a lack of underwear shot would roam the internet at an even more violent pace. And if the denim happened to rip over the bite mark Pete left on his ass, well, tumblr might go down from a thousand teenagers reblogging a thousand times.

He does catch someone taking a picture out of his periphery, but there’s not much he can do. Aside from getting the cell phone confiscated if he throws a big enough stink, it’ll be on the internet in hours. They fucked naked this time, there shouldn’t be any awkward stains, and if there are, well, they have over a decade of filthy Way brothers reputation to cover his ass. Gerard wearing the same black shirt for a month reinforced the idea. Demanding the picture get deleted would probably be more suspicious, the lack was one of the things that made Warped 05 obvious to certain sections of their fans. That and the fucking cd, but Bebe’s promised no Bang The Doldrums this time around.

Step four of dealing with a morning after is the bitchy roommate scorning your choice to get tanked and get fucked. Mikey’s lucky. He has not one opinionated roommate, but five. Still, they’re not as bad as they could be. As soon as they learned Alicia’s okay with it, she just doesn’t ever want a single detail, the accusing crossed arms and unimpressed expressions stopped. 

The guys don’t want any details either. Mike and James are good guys, but they’re kind of aggressively straight. Frank thinks being around someone with the same mental issues ends in each party dragging down the other, and after Gerard and Bert he can’t really blame Frank for the opinion. And Gerard just doesn’t want to hear about his brother’s sex life, just like Mikey preferring to believe Bandit was an immaculate conception. 

It doesn’t matter though. When it comes down to it, the details are all they have. Torn upholstery in cabs, and reeking like chlorine, and drawing on their thighs in eyeliner when the pen was too fine to work. Mikey doesn’t really want to share the details.


End file.
